Exhibition | Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da), Lotus and Ducks (detail), ca. 1696, Qing dynasty; hanging scroll, ink on paper
(Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, F1998.45)
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Press release (18 June 2015) for the exhibition now on view at The Freer:
Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren (1626–1705)
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 20 June 2015 — 3 January 2016
Born a prince of the Ming imperial house, Bada Shanren survived the military conquest of his dynasty and lived as a Buddhist monk for 30 years before emerging into fame as a professional artist. His storied life leaves many questions unanswered, and his masterpieces of painting and calligraphy are renowned in Chinese art for their daring idiosyncratic approaches to style, composition and meaning. On view from June 20, 2015 until January 3, 2016, at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art, Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren (1626–1705) features 43 of the artist’s works, on public display for the first time in more than a decade. Enigmas is the final exhibition of the Freer’s celebrated collection of Chinese paintings before the museum closes for major renovations in 2016.
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da), Two Geese, ca. 1700, Qing dynasty; hanging scroll, ink on paper, 184.1 x 90.6 cm (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, F1998.47)
“The Freer Gallery of Art owns the largest, most diverse and arguably the most significant collection of Bada Shanren’s art outside China,” said Stephen Allee, associate curator for Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Freer and Sackler Galleries. “The enigmatic quality of Bada Shanren’s work brings one back to his art again and again. Trying to fathom some ambiguous aspect of a painting or calligraphy, one is convinced there is a key to unlocking the mysteries, cracking the code and that maybe this will be the time one stumbles across it. Of course, one never really finds the answer—Bada Shanren is too self-contained an artist for that—but the quest is always rewarding, as each careful viewing invariably yields new pleasures and discoveries.”
Particularly significant among the artist’s surviving works is the album Scripture of the Inner Radiances of the Yellow Court from 1684, which bears his earliest known signature using the name ‘Bada Shanren’. Similarly, Lotus is a rare early album done ca. 1665 while the artist was still a Buddhist monk. Its ingenuity of composition foretells the stylistic developments of his later works.
Bada Shanren developed a unique visual vocabulary full of personal symbolism and artistic gesture, and he frequently included unusual elements and juxtapositions that were deliberately jarring or obscure. Many works possess great graphic power, but the meaning behind them is elusive, leaving viewers puzzled and intrigued. Although outwardly playful at times, some paintings reveal a troubled psychological edge, an innately dark outlook on his own fortunes and the condition of the world at large, that he concealed behind a surface of simplicity and humor.
In Enigmas, visitors have an opportunity to view a broad selection of Bada Shanren’s work from his time as a monk in the 1660s, through his peak professional years in the 1680s and ’90s, to his late period in the early 1700s, when he became a hermit seeking solitude and harmony with the natural order.
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A catalogue from a 2003 exhibition was republished in 2013 by Orchid Press:
Joseph Chang, Bai Qianshen, and Stephen Allee, In Pursuit of Heavenly Harmony: Paintings and Calligraphy by Bada Shanren (Hong Kong: Orchid Press, 2013), 222 pages, ISBN: 978-9745240308, $60.
Bada Shanren, the enigmatic, eccentric monk-painter also known as Zu Da, created a wealth of beautiful and important paintings and calligraphy over the course of his life (1626–1705). A princely descendent of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) imperial house, Bada Shanren developed a distinctive, evolving individual style of painting that had a profound and lasting influence on other calligraphers. Two prominent collector-scholars, Wang Fangyu and Sum Wai, were devoted to the collection and study of Bada Shanren’s oeuvre. Their gift to the Freer Gallery of Art of twenty superb works by Bada Shanren and an extensive research collection of around 1,900 items, together with a further purchase of thirteen works from their collection, have made the Freer the unrivaled center for the exhibition and study of Bada’s art. In the spring of 2003, an exhibition of these works will be on display in the Freer Gallery of Art; this book accompanies the exhibition and will have a life well beyond it, as it documents an important part of the museum’s permanent collection. Text in English, with glossary and detailed descriptions of exhibits in bilingual English/Chinese.
Call for Papers | Allegory and Topography
From H-ArtHist:
Allegory and Topography in Early Modern Period (16th–18th Centuries)
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, Paris, 9–10 June 2016
Proposals due by 10 February 2016
Organized by Étienne Jollet and Antonella Fenech Kroke
The arts of the early modern period, from the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century, attach great importance to the allegory as a mode of visual evocation of the invisible universal—be it the Christian divine or the human values. Defined in this manner, the notion of allegory appears far removed from the understanding of topography intended as expression of the specificity of a ‘place’, all together visible, physical and particular. However, this tension between the universal and the particular, the invisible and the visible, the intangible and the tangible, figure and place, meaning and representation, characterizes the culture and the arts of early modern. During this period, Western Europe thinks out a new order of the world and, at the same time, endeavors to describe it and to figure it through complex symbolic representations set in a significant space, which then is ‘place’.
Four major questions constitute the principal axes of this symposium.
• The first one is the place of allegory. Allegory deploys its figures in a meaningful extension and in variable ways—for instance, in the tension between allegory and personification.
• The second issue concerns allegory of ‘place’ (but also allegory of specific places): this dimension is especially important because of the constitution, since the Renaissance, of increasingly strong political entities gradually defining their boundaries, until the appearance of modern notion of borders at the end of the eighteenth century.
• The third point focuses on the relation and on the tension between allegory and the world. The early modern period is characterized by a renewal of comprehension of the world and by the discoveries of regions of the Earth still unknown to Europeans: in this particular context, how does allegory challenge the new topographical knowledge and, first and foremost the development of cartography? But beside this kind of issues, one can also question the links between allegory and other ‘worlds’, as those intangible of the soul which shape other visual
forms of allegorical cartographies.
• The fourth question concerns allegorical spaces, that is to say the space as a notion provided by different meaning but irreducible to a precise signification: mainly the landscape in which an allegorical meaning is just potentially to be found in natural features (for example, the entrance of a grotto, a waterfall, a volcano, etc.) allowing sometimes the representation of the nature’s sublime to emerge.
This call for papers is an invitation to all scholars working in the field in a plural and interdisciplinary perspective. We encourage to propose submissions for the conference, both emerging and established researchers. Please send your proposal, in English or French (max. 500 words including a short bibliography) with a one-page curriculum vitae to the organizers: allegory.topography@gmail.com. The deadline for the call for paper is February 10, 2016.
The symposium is sponsored by the HiCSA, University Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Centre André Chastel (UMR 8150), University Paris-Sorbonne.
Exhibition | Under the Guillotine: James Gillray
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From Metropolitan State University of Denver:
Under the Guillotine: James Gillray and Contemporary Counterparts
Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver, 18 December 2015 — 19 March 2016
Curated by Arthur Gilbert and Cecily Cullen
The Center for Visual Art, for the first time in its history, is presenting work that dates back more than two hundred years in Under the Guillotine: James Gillray and Contemporary Counterparts. Over 60 original hand-colored etchings will be shown from the collection of Arthur Gilbert, professor at the University of Denver. London artist James Gillray (1756–1815), hailed as the father of modern caricature, was not reserved in his biting critique of European politics and social norms of his day. In this work we see Gillray’s dark humor unleashed at the expense of the royal family, the institution of marriage and healthcare, among other current issues.
Although Gillray’s etchings date back over 200 years, the themes are familiar to contemporary society, highlighting the cyclical nature of history. In response to the ongoing relevance of Gillray’s subject matter, a contemporary take on political satire is presented by the work of three living artists, Molly Crabapple, Chris Dacre, and Deb Sokolow. These artists wield wit and irony in their critique of today’s political and social norms.
New York artist and writer Molly Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE magazine. Her illustrations take a line from Gillray’s brand of satire, pointing out the ridiculous and unjust with irreverence. Illustrations in the exhibition draw from her press tour of Guantanamo Bay prison and other articles in VICE and Vanity Fair, in which she targets Donald Trump and ISIS. Crabapple’s memoir, Drawing Blood, will be released in December 2015.
The work of Chris Dacre reflects upon his own experience in the US military. Shining a light on the hypocrisy of war glorification and recruiting techniques targeted at the naïve, Dacre’s toy-sized porcelain tanks and pirouetting soldiers beckon the curious to play at the game of war. His installation also includes lithographs depicting war scenes emblazoned with commands to “Be A Man!” or “Do Something for Once in Your Life,” sentiments felt if not heard once the game of war becomes reality.
Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow combines fiction and humor to create work that parallels real life events and characters. For this exhibition, Sokolow is contributing text-based works focused on the conspiracy theories swirling around Denver International Airport and the shady campaign strategy of a fictional politician.
The work of James Gillray was curated by Arthur Gilbert and CVA Managing Director and Curator Cecily Cullen. The contemporary response was curated by Cecily Cullen.
Exhibition| Salon Style: French Portraits
From the National Museum of Women in the Arts:
Salon Style: French Portraits from the Collection
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., 29 January — 22 May 2016
Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, Portrait of Princess Belozersky, 1798 (National Museum of Women in the Arts)
The biennial Salon of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris was the preeminent exhibition venue for artists in the 18th century. In order to exhibit their work, artists had to be members of the Academy. Artists were voted in by other members after being presented formally by a current academician. For women, this was doubly challenging: their work had to be found as worthy as that of their male peers despite not having equal access to artistic training, and the total number of female members allowed at any one time was limited to four.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard made history on May 31, 1783, when they were both admitted into the Academy. However, while Labille-Guiard was accepted via the standard application process, Vigée-LeBrun’s acceptance came about under different circumstances. The Academy was compelled to admit her under an edict from King Louis XVI, whose wife, Marie Antoinette, employed Vigée-LeBrun as a portraitist. With the admission of Labille-Guiard and Vigée-LeBrun in 1783, the Academy reached its quota for women artists, together with the portrait and still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster and miniaturist Marie-Thérèse Reboul Vien.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, works by women who exhibited in the Salon were compared and judged against one another, as were their characters. By placing themselves in the public sphere, Vigée-LeBrun, Labille-Guiard, and other women artists risked upsetting societal expectations, which held that virtuous women belonged solely to the private, domestic sphere. Despite this risk, these artists persisted in exhibiting in the Salon throughout the rest of the 18th century. This focus exhibition examines these women and their art as well as their artistic legacies—particularly that of Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun.
Exhibition | Coffee in Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics
From the Pera Museum (part of Google’s Cultural Institute Art Project) . . .
Coffee Break: The Adventure of Coffee in Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics
Online exhibition, Pera Müzesi, Istanbul
French School, Enjoying Coffee, first half of the eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 112 x 102 cm (Istanbul: Pera Museum)
Discovered in Ethiopia as the ‘magic fruit’ and reaching the land of the Ottomans through Yemen in the 15th century, coffee soon assumed its place as a prestigious beverage in the palace and wealthy households. Over time, coffee not only generated its own rituals and ceremonies, but also played an instrumental role in the development of social life. This unique selection from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection investigates the various routines, rituals, and relationships centered on coffee, as well as concepts associated with modernism, such as public space, social roles, and economics, through an examination of coffee culture and Kütahya ceramic production, which largely contributed to its development.
As the second most important center of ceramic production after İznik during the Ottoman era, Kütahya witnessed intensive ceramic production in the Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods, and has upheld this art form to date with traditional methods. Having reached its zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries in terms of creativity, creativity, the ensuing years witnessed a decline in variety and production rate of Kütahya tiles and ceramics. It was once again revived in the late 19th century and, standing somewhere between İznik and Çanakkale ceramics as ‘urban art’ became an integral part of the Ottoman art mosaic with its broad product range and continuity.
Enter the online exhibition here»
Famous Golf Portrait Sells at Bonhams
Press release (10 December 2015) from Bonhams:
Lemuel Francis Abbott, Portrait of Henry Callender, 1790s.
[Last week] Bonhams sold one of the most famous golfing paintings in the world for £722,500. Lemuel Francis Abbott’s The Portrait of Henry Callender standing in a landscape, in the red coat of Captain General of the Blackheath Golf Club and holding a putter is now the most valuable portrait of golf ever sold at auction [sale 22645, lot 47]. Also in the Old Master Paintings sale at Bonhams London was an extremely rare iron headed putter from around 1780, almost certainly the same club featured in the portrait, which sold for £62,500. Both lots went to the same buyer in the packed saleroom.
Painted between 1790 and 1798, Henry Callender’s portrait is one of the earliest golf paintings of an identified sitter. Prints were made of the work in 1812 after Callender’s death and copies have hung in golf clubs and private collections worldwide for centuries. The original painting has hung at the Royal Blackheath Golf Club for more than 150 years, watching over the famous ‘Wee Dinners’ in the clubhouse. Traditionally, guests enjoyed haggis, neeps and tatties before hitting golf balls out of the window onto the 18th green from the dining room table. The Royal Blackheath has sold the painting to raise funds for the Club’s acquisition of the freehold of its course and clubhouse from The Crown Estate—a one-off opportunity to ensure its future. “Working with this painting has taken our department on a fascinating journey through British cultural history,” said Andrew McKenzie, Bonhams Director of Old Master Paintings. “A Scottish expatriate, Henry Callender was both connoisseur and sociable bon viveur and his charisma shines through this charming painting. The sale marked an incredibly exciting opportunity for golfing enthusiasts all over the world.”
Other highlights of the sale included a number of lots which sold for well over their pre-sale estimates. A winter landscape by Gysbrecht Leytens sold for £110,500, more than five times its estimate of £20,000–30,000, while a still life from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger smashed its estimate of £30,000–50,000, selling for £86,500. An early 16th-century German School drawing, Portrait of a Gentleman, bust-length, in a red hat, also sold for £35,000, nearly ten times its pre-sale estimate of £4,000–6,000.
Call for Papers | Rethinking Pictures: A Transatlantic Dialogue
From H-ArtHist:
Rethinking Pictures: A Transatlantic Dialogue
Paris, 19–20 May 2016
Proposals due by 25 January 2016
On the occasion of the launch of Picturing, the first volume of the Terra Foundation Essays, a new publication series exploring themes of critical importance to the history of arts and visual culture of the United States, the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris, and the Terra Foundation for American Art are jointly organizing a conference that will further the transatlantic dialogue about what pictures are and what they do.
Since the 1980s, theories of visual studies in Anglo-American scholarship and of Bildwissenschaft in German art history have expanded the field of potential subjects for study, building an extensive body of literature and introducing innovative methodologies and approaches. Developed nearly contemporaneously, these theories about the nature and reception of images have run parallel to one another. While on the Anglophone side visual studies have branched out to a wide range of media following a socio-critical impetus, Bildwissenschaft finds origins in Aby Warburg’s methods and (among other approaches) is notably nourished by a hermeneutic perspective. Over the last decade on both sides of the Atlantic, new avenues of inquiry have questioned the purely visual nature of images to consider them as objects that possess agency or vitality in and of themselves. Pictures are now understood as inviting complex experience in which the entire body, not only the eye, is solicited, and as invoking multiple temporalities, by collapsing past and present. Attention is called to the materials that constitute the object world and the ways in which their circulation creates social relationships that become part of their meaning over time. In alignment with object-centered approaches in anthropology, material culture, media studies, and philosophy, recent theories of the visual have raised questions of affect, subjectivity, and medium in Anglo-American scholarship, while socio-historical considerations have gained particular ground in the German literature. As renewed attention to the art work’s “materiality” shifts the terms of investigation, this conference invites speakers to reflect on the differences and convergences between the intellectual traditions of visual studies and Bildwissenschaft. Are there ways to think about pictures anew by bringing these models more closely together? Does the move away from visuality towards the material offer possibilities for overcoming early differences between these two approaches?
We seek proposals for 20-minute talks introducing new ideas and propositions. We especially welcome submissions from early- and mid-career scholars. Presentations are encouraged to focus on specific objects and historical conditions in order to anchor theoretical questions. While binary considerations of comparative methodologies and the scope of national traditions will certainly arise, the discussion will be plural and interdisciplinary, inviting reflections on the various forms of study of the visual arts in Europe, the United States, and beyond. Please submit abstracts no longer than 500 words in English along with a CV, to rethinkingpictures@gmail.com by January 25, 2016. The symposium will cover travel and lodging. Selected participants will be notified by February 15, 2016.
Year-End Gift Ideas
I’ve had good intentions of pulling this together for weeks, and now it’s surely of almost no use to anyone in terms of gift ideas. Still, it allows me to expand a bit on the usual scope of the blog, and please, by all means chime in with comments for the brilliant suggestions I should have included! -CH
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From Little, Brown, and Company:
Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692 (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2015), 512 pages, ISBN: 978-0316200608, $32.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff’s account of this fantastical story-the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.
Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, Pulitzer Prize finalist; A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize; and Cleopatra: A Life. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Named a 2011 Library Lion by the New York Public Library, she lives in New York City.
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From Knopf:
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), 640 pages, ISBN: 978-0375414145, $35.
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.
In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.
Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. He was also a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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From Rizzoli:
Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and John Richardson, with photographs by Todd Eberle, The House of Thurn und Taxis (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0847847143, $85.
Adventure through the princely Thurn und Taxis estate, an enchanted palace where 1,000 years of history meets a thoroughly modern family. For 200 years the Thurn und Taxis family have called the palace of St. Emmeram home. Regarded as one of Germany’s finest examples of historicist architecture, the Regensburg residence’s myriad rooms trace centuries of distinctive styles: a Romanesque-Gothic cloister built between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, a neo-Renaissance marble staircase, a number of Rococo and neo-Rococo staterooms, and a Baroque library frescoed in 1737. Celebrated photographer Todd Eberle captures the confluence of high art and grand architecture within the 500-room palace to reveal the curious tale of the Thurn und Taxis family. Complete with stately portraits and scenes of life at St. Emmeram, this monograph offers a glimpse into the world and glamour of one of the most important dynasties of the European aristocracy.
Sir John Richardson is a British art historian and Picasso biographer. Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis is the matriarch of the princely house of the Thurn and Taxis. André Leon Talley is an author and contributing editor of Vogue. Alexander Count von Schoenburg is a journalist and author. Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis is an author and writer for Vogue.
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From Flammarion:
A Day at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (Paris: Flammarion, 2015), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-2080201997, $35.
An insider’s tour of the magnificent seventeenth-century castle and gardens, conceived by Le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre, that inspired the great châteaux of Europe. Vaux le Vicomte’s rich history began in 1641, when infamous finance minister Nicolas Fouquet bought the estate and enlisted architect Louis Le Vau, decorator Charles Le Brun, and garden designer André Le Nôtre to transform it into a lavish residence. His extravagance piqued Louis XIV’s jealousy, and he was thrown into prison for mishandling funds. The château inspired the design of Versailles and was later home to the great chef Vatel, who famously died for his art. This volume traces the château’s history from the seventeenth century through the Belle Époque, World War I, and its public opening in 1968. Exclusive photography and archival documents offer unprecedented access to the château, furnishings, and gardens, and illuminate the extraordinary secrets of court life and centuries of celebrations that include the enchanting candlelit tours held today.
Alexandre de Vogüé, Jean-Charles de Vogüé and Ascanio de Vogüé are brothers who together manage the Vogüé family estate. In 2012, they began to successfully develop a range of business ventures at the Vaux le Vicomte château. Alexandre, Jean-Charles and Ascanio are fifth generation members of the de Vogüé family. Bruno Ehrs is a lifestyle and architectural photographer based in Stockholm, Sweden. His photographs have been featured in over twenty solo exhibitions and have appeared in numerous magazines and books, including One Savile Row (Flammarion 2014). He has also published several art volumes of his work.
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From Other Press:
Chantal Thomas, The Exchange of Princesses, translated by John Cullen (New York: Other Press, 2015), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1590517024, $17.
Set in the French and Spanish courts of the eighteenth century, this novel is based on a true story about the fate of two young princesses caught in the intrigues and secrets of the moment. Philippe d’Orléans, the regent of France, has a gangrenous heart—the result of a life of debauchery, alcohol, power, and flattery. One morning in 1721, he decides to marry eleven-year-old Louis XV to the daughter of Philippe V of Spain, who is only four. Orléans hopes this will tie his kingdom to Spain. But were Louis to die without begetting an heir—the likeliness of which is greatly increased by having a child bride—Orléans himself would finally be king. Orléans tosses his own daughter into the bargain, the twelve-year-old Mlle de Montpensier, who will marry the Prince of Asturias, the heir to the Spanish throne. The Spanish court enthusiastically agrees and arrangements are made. The two nations trade their princesses in a grand ceremony in 1722, making bonds that should end the historical conflict. Nothing turns out as expected.
Chantal Thomas is a noted philosopher and writer. She has taught at a number of American universities and is the author of twenty-five works, including novels, histories, short stories, plays, and essays. Her internationally acclaimed novel Farewell, My Queen, a fictional account of Marie Antoinette’s final days in Versailles, won the Prix Femina in 2002 and was made into an award-winning film by Benoit Jacquot, and starred Diane Kruger. A film adaptation of The Exchange of Princesses, to be directed by Marc Dugain, is currently in the works.
John Cullen is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck, Juli Zeh’s Decompression, Antonio Skármeta’s A Distant Father, and Yasmina Reza’s Happy Are the Happy. He lives in upstate New York.
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From The Getty:
Bruno Gibert, A King Seen from the Sky (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015), 32 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1606064603, $17.
This delightful book by award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Bruno Gibert is inspired by the true story of the first flight of living creatures in a handmade aircraft. On September 19, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their new invention, the hot-air balloon or montgolfière, at the Palace of Versailles before a large crowd, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Considered too dangerous for human passengers, the experimental vessel carried a sheep, a duck, and a hen in its basket. The balloon flew for about eight minutes, covered a distance of roughly two miles, and reached an altitude of more than 1,500 feet before landing safely. The animals’ balloon ride caused a sensation and the first human flight followed a few months later.
By the end of 1783, Louis XVI had ennobled the Montgolfier family in recognition of the brothers’ important achievements, which perhaps prompted a royal celebration for the animals like the one depicted in the book. In Gibert’s fantasy, the animals anger the king at the fete by describing him as “no bigger than the tiniest snail” when viewed from high above the ground, and Louis imprisons them in the Bastille. While the direct role of talking animals in the storming of the Bastille in 1789 can’t quite be supported by historical evidence, this book does vividly evoke the stirring developments in aeronautics that took place right around the time of the French Revolution. Ages five to seven.
Bruno Gibert is a children’s book author and illustrator; he also writes novels for adults. His book Le Petit Gibert Illustré received the Prix Coup de Coeur du Salon de Montreuil in 2010.
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From Frances Lincoln:
Anna Keay and Caroline Stanford, Landmark: A History of Britain in 50 Buildings, 50 Years of the Landmark Trust (London: Frances Lincoln, 2015), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0711236455, $40.
This engaging and sumptuously illustrated book celebrates the Landmark Trust’s achievement in the protection of British heritage since the Trust was established 50 years ago. From a medieval hall house to the winner of the 2013 Stirling Prize for Architecture, 50 buildings rescued by Landmark from threatened oblivion are presented here that vividly illustrate the history of Britain from 1250 to the present day.
Presented in the order in which they were built, the selected buildings include the unusual, the fantastic, the spectacular, the utilitarian and the enchanting, each one offering a fascinating glimpse into the past of the British people. In telling the stories of how the buildings came to be, how they were used and how they were adapted by subsequent generations, this book brings history to life through the evidence in the buildings our ancestors have left behind. Examples include a 15th-century inn in Suffolk, an Elizabethan hospital in Yorkshire, a lighthouse on Lundy and an Italianate railway station. The Landmark Trust’s often heroic rescue of each of these buildings is also placed in the context of the Trust’s own evolution to date and the history of British conservation practice.
Anna Keay is a historian with a professional specialism in historic buildings. She has a BA in Modern History from Oxford University, and a PhD in 17th-century British history from the University of London. Formerly a curator at Hampton Court Palace and Curatorial Director of English Heritage, she is now Director of the Landmark Trust. Her books include The Magnificent Monarch (2008), about King Charles II; The Elizabethan Tower of London (2001) and The Crown Jewels (2011). She is also a regular contributor to TV and radio. She divides her time between London and King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
Caroline Stanford has been Historian to the Landmark Trust since 2001. She holds a BA in Modern History from Oxford University, an MA in Early Modern History from London University, and an MSc in Historic Conservation from Oxford Brookes University. She has researched many of the Trust’s buildings, participating in Landmark’s rescue of some of Britain’s finest buildings at risk. This combination of academic research and applied practice allows her to write and contribute widely across all building types and periods to all types of media.
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Available from Pentreath & Hall (I can’t say enough good things about both Pentreath’s blog and his shop in London):
John Rocque’s Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark, 1746, in 24 sheets, £175.
This reproduced publication, measuring 32.5″ (82.5 cm) wide by 22″ (55.9 cm) high, consists of: a cover sheet; an introduction by James Howgego, a past Keeper of Prints and Pictures at the Guildhall Library, London; a key sheet and 24 map sheets, at a scale of 26″ to a mile. The map sheets form a grid eight across and three high, with the image on each sheet being approximately 27″ (68.6 cm) high by 19″ (48.3 cm) wide, thus forming a map area of approximately 12′ 8″ (386 cm) by 6′ 8″ (203 cm) if trimmed and assembled. If the two outer columns were ignored (and their borders transferred to the second and seventh columns), the assembled map area becomes approximately 9′ 6″ (290 cm) wide by 6′ 8″ (203 cm).
The original image was captured, in 1970, by photographic process, which, after being cleaned up and all trace of colouring removed (again by photographic process), resulted in a positive film the same size as the original. This film was then used to create lithographic plates, from which the 1971 print run was taken. The current print run used a digital image, which has been printed lithographically. The Plan is printed on 140 gsm acid free paper, sidestitch bound in 285 gsm card covers.
Exhibition | Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron
Florist’s Sign and Bracket, 18th century, France, wrought iron and rolled iron, cut, polychromed, and gilded; fastened with rivets and rings. Sign: 28 × 21 × 5 inches (71.5 × 52.6 × 12.5 cm), bracket: 33 × 52 × 2 inches (84 × 132.5 × 6 cm) (Rouen: Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, inv. LS 2011.0.199)
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Now on view at The Barnes Foundation:
Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 19 September 2015 — 4 January 2016
Curated by Judith Dolkart with Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau
The world’s most important collection of wrought iron objects—door knockers, garden implements, jewelry, keyhole escutcheons, locks, bas reliefs, signs, strongboxes, surgical tools—from the Musée le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen will complement one of the most intriguing collections at the Barnes Foundation: the 887 pieces of European and American metalwork that punctuate the Foundation’s signature wall arrangements of old master and modern paintings.
Escutcheon, 18th century, France, wrought iron and rolled iron, stamped and with openwork, 19.3 × 16.4 × 0.8 cm (Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Inv. LS S.N.3)
Albert C. Barnes underscored the formal affinities that these objects shared with the “motives and arabesques” in the paintings in his Gallery, neither identifying individual objects nor explaining their use. Often, he combined disparate objects—shoe buckles and door hinges, ladles and hasps—to create new forms. In a 1942 letter to the American artist Stuart Davis, Barnes noted that the anonymous craftsman of such functional items was “just as authentic an artist as a Titian, Renoir, or Cézanne.”
This exhibition will explore the fabrication, function, and intricate ornamentation of approximately 150 masterworks from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen. They range in date from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, and they show iron as unexpectedly versatile, with its capacity to convey both masculine heft and an impossibly fragile delicacy that is hard to square with its industrial image. Objects ennobled with silver and gold inlays show iron as more than base metal. Some are deadly serious in their efficacy; others delight as much by their wit as by their exquisite intricacy—locks that represent their own function, for example, one with a built-in faithful guard dog or one with spring-loaded manacles ready to catch a lock-pick—an 18th-century sign in the shape of a greyhound that looks like something Calder might have made two centuries later, an early electrified bat-shaped night-light.
Assembled in the 19th century by Jean-Louis-Henri Le Secq Destournelles (1818–1882), the celebrated photographer of French architectural monuments, and his son Henri (1854–1925), the Le Secq collection was shown to great acclaim at the Exposition Universelle in 1900 and installed until the 1920s at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris. In the early 1920s, Le Secq acquired the deconsecrated church of Saint-Laurent in Rouen, where he lived and arranged his extensive collection of European and Middle Eastern objects by type, in distinctive, often symmetrical, wall arrangements and in custom-made vitrines. Barnes, who traveled frequently to France as he built his collection, is believed to have visited Rouen to see this impressive holding. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue containing an essay on Barnes’s collecting of metalwork, one on the collection at Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, and short essays on groups of works, and an illustrated glossary of technical terms.
The exhibition is curated by Judith F. Dolkart, the Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and former Deputy Director of Art and Archival Collections and Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes Foundation. An expert on the art and culture of 19th-century France, Dolkart graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1989 and received an A.B. in fine arts in 1993 from Harvard-Radcliffe College, where she examined the work of Frank Stella for her thesis. In 1997, she earned an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. During her 2013 fellowship at the Center for Curatorial Leadership, Dolkart was mentored by the director of the Harvard Art Museums and had a week-long residency with the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania.
Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, curator in charge of the objets d’art at the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, selected the objects included in Strength and Splendor and authored the catalogue’s essay on the holdings in Rouen, as well as several entries on individual objects.
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The catalogue is available from The Barnes Foundation:
Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, with contributions by Richard Wattenmaker, François Boyenval, Hélène Thomas, and Bruno Varin, Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen (Philadelphia: The Barnes Foundation, 2015), 175 pages, ISBN: 978-0984857869, $65.
The Le Secq collection is the most important holding of wrought iron in the world, combining artistic virtuosity, technological innovation, and whimsy. It was created by Jean-Louis Henri Le Secq Destournelles (1818–1882) and his son Henri-Jean Le Secq des Tournelles (1854–1925). The older Le Secq focused on masterpieces—exceptional objects. The younger Le Secq inherited his father’s enthusiasm and assembled an encyclopedic array of adornments, instruments, and tools, which he catalogued like natural history specimens. He gave the collection to the city of Rouen, where it has been spectacularly displayed in the deconsecrated church of Saint-Laurent since 1921. This catalogue covers some 150 of the most magnificent objects in the Le Secq collection, classed in ten categories—including locks and keys, decorative plaques, and everyday objects—with essays on the history of the Le Secq collection and on the place of
metalwork in the Barnes Foundation.
New Book | Exhibiting the Empire
From Manchester UP (and now 50% off at Oxford UP’s sitewide sale) . . .
John MacKenzie and John McAleer, eds., Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of Display and the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0719091094, $110.
Exhibiting the Empire considers how a whole range of cultural products from paintings, prints, photographs, panoramas and ‘popular’ texts to ephemera, newspapers and the press, theatre and music, exhibitions, institutions and architecture were used to record, celebrate and question the development of the British Empire. The empire was exhibited for a variety of reasons: to promote trade and commerce; to encourage emigration and settlement; to assert, project and cement imperial authority; to digest and display the data and specimens derived from various voyages of exploration and missionary endeavours undertaken in the name of empire; to celebrate and commemorate important landmarks, people or events in the imperial pantheon. By considering a broad sweep of different media and ‘imperial moments’, this collection highlights the contingent and changing nature of imperial display, as well as its continuing impact in Britain throughout (and beyond) the country’s imperial meridian. Exhibiting the empire represents a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the relationship between culture and the British Empire.
Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, individual chapters bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of media, material culture and display, and their interaction with the history of the British Empire. Exhibiting the Empire will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British history, the history of empire, art history, and the history of museums and collecting.
John M. MacKenzie is Emeritus Professor of Imperial History at Lancaster University and holds Honorary Professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews and Stirling, as well as an Honorary Fellowship at Edinburgh University. John McAleer is Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Cultures of Display and the British Empire, John MacKenzie and John McAleer
1 An Elite Imperial Vision: Eighteenth-Century British Country Houses and Four-Continents Imagery, Stephanie Barczewski
2 Exhibiting Exploration: Captain Cook, Voyages of Exploration and the Culture of Display, John McAleer
3 Satirical Peace Prints and the Cartographic Unconscious, Douglas Fordham
4 Sanguinary Engagements: Exhibiting the Naval Battles of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Eleanor Hughes
5 Empire under Glass: The British Empire and the Crystal Palace, 1851–1911, Jeffrey Auerbach
6 Ephemera and the British Empire, Ashley Jackson and David Tomkins
7 Exhibiting the Empire in Print: The Press, the Publishing World and the Promotion of ‘Greater Britain’, Berny Sèbe
8. Exhibiting the Empire at the Delhi Durbar of 1911: Imperial and Cultural Contexts, John MacKenzie
9. Elgar’s Pageant of Empire, 1924: An Imperial Leitmotiv, Nalini Ghuman
10. Representing ‘Our Island Sultanate’ in London and Zanzibar: Cross-currents in Educating Imperial Publics, Sarah Longair
Index
Enfilade 
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